A wild youth who liked Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and a self-confessed "jerk" whose mother was "on welfare, a little bit", the 50-year-old lawyer has revealed how he was arrested for stealing albums from a store in Salem, Massachusetts, when he was 12.

Brown's parents divorced when he was one, and each remarried three times. For a time, he lived with his grandparents.

Until recently, he was probably the third most famous person in his family. His wife, Gail Huff, is a Boston TV news reporter, while one of his two daughters was an American Idol contestant.

Cosmo's "America's sexiest man" 1982 was then a 22-year-old law student. Even then, he described himself as "a bit of a patriot".

"You don't see anything [in the centrefold]," he told the Boston Globe in a recent interview.

He got $1,000 (£614) for the shoot. At the time, he and Huff were models and actors in TV commercials, and met when they were trying to recoup money from their agents.

Brown is a committed triathlete who rises at 5am to train and describes himself as a driven man.

In 2006 he supported healthcare reforms in Massachusetts that bear some resemblance to the Senate bill passed before Christmas, but has pledged to oppose Obama's reforms in Congress, saying they are too costly and would interfere with his state's arrangements.

"One thing is clear – voters do not want the trillion-dollar healthcare bill that is being forced on the American people," he said.

Months ago he promised that: "I'm going to be the only person down there [in Washington] who is going to be the independent voter and thinker."